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Our final leg during the European summer cruise.
The new crew, Steve, Peter and Frankie, as well as Bjoern, arrived in time, helped Ulf and Philip fix a few issues and buy a tremendous amount of food – before leaving on the four day sail to Madeira.
We started with a decent breeze and were looking for wind towards the end. After our only swim in the deep ocean we tied up in Madeira visited the island: one day in the Capital, Funchal, (a 1.5hr bus ride away) and one day per rental car along the Northshore. Of course we sampled plenty of Madeira before moving on to Lanzarote (a 2 day sail away).
Luckily, we stopped in La Graciosa on the way, and had the opportunity to experience the Canaries from a different (not the typical tourist) angle.
When we arrived in Arrecife, we were impressed with the modern marina, its facilities and general protection against swell. We toured the island for a day by car and had the opportunity to listen to Jimmy Cornell and other experts speak about general cruising topics (Jimmy organized a 1 week cruising seminar for the Barbados 50 regatta).
We made it to our final destination in time and sailed about 800nm on this leg.

A video summary of our roughly 950nm tour this summer from Cork, Ireland, to Lisbon, Portugal.
We meant to spend a little more time cruising the southern Irish coast and ideally round Fastnet Rock before heading south. However, the weather convinced us to leave right away to take advantage of the northerly winds (and to avoid the upcoming strong southerlies).
While the water remained cold all the way to Lisbon, it was clear that we were moving south as day after day we were wearing less and less layers.
While La Coruna does not look that pretty from the water, we were quickly convinced we found a hidden jewel when walking down the old town alleys with endless rows of restaurants, bars and an amazing atmosphere until late. That in combination with outstanding food and endless opportunities to visit historic sites made for a good start into the Iberian part of our tour.
Santiago de Compostella did not disappoint at all; neither did Lisbon – fantastic destinations on their own.
What surprised us was the natural beauty of the Islas Cies (a must stop for any visitor in Galicia!) as well as the atmosphere of Porto. We wish we had been able to spend more time in either location.
On the downside, the water was much colder than expected and we therefore sailed in a fair bit of fog (we never saw the Portuguese coast north of Lisbon…).

After a ( for some of us) very late night out, we got organized to take care of the remaining items before our departure. We needed water, groceries, and a few other items, exchange burgees, return power adapters, check out of the marina/country, take final shower and stow equipment away…
The biggest and most important task was food shopping at Jumbo, the local grocery store. We learned quickly that some details got lost in translation during our initial inquiry on Sunday and that we had only about 30 min to buy everything we needed – clearly not even close to the two hours we had planned for.
Nevertheless, Ulf had our shopping list and sent Steve, Björn and Philip all over the supermercado to collect at least the critical or heavy items in lightning speed. It was quite a rush. We managed to get the first 2 carts in line just in time and due to the very slow check out process had sufficient time to collect another cart full of food before the final check out.
The food got delivered at 16:00 and we left the marina to set sails at 17:00 ( just past the SB20 worlds). The change in wind speed and direction was significant as we went from almost zero from the southwest to 15kn from the North in minutes.
Happy that we had the wind we were looking for, we got going, went through our safety protocols and settled into our routine.
Ulf cooked us a nice tuna with rice meal as we sailed together with Jan on La Vida (he had left an hour earlier to sail with us for a while) through the quite busy shipping lanes.
The water is getting warmer already and the stars are coming out. Nice to be back on the ocean – life is still good.

Today is the beginning of our next leg, Portugal to Canary Islands (via Madeira), and it was blowing quite a bit in the anchorage (enough to make us nervous and work out various options to safely make it into the harbor).
Just like last time – after a long debate, we were lucky again as the stiff northerly breeze turned 180 degrees and calmed down (what are the chances?) We had picked up Steve at the yacht club just in time to motor in and tie up at the pontoon in very calm conditions.

And then it was like Christmas again – Peter brought all the goodies from the US we were waiting for to continue our boat work. We replaced the fresh water pump and the entire hose system attached to it, while Steve and Frankie installed the whisker pole brackets on the mast (yes, we let the two jet legged newcomers drill holes into the new mast…).
Ulf went for a jog.

After Bjoern arrived, we had our welcome drinks in the cockpit (with Linda’s present to Peter, a fresh bottle of Jameson), the wind picked up and we went to town for our first crew dinner.

Overall a very successful day…

And now to our title – Peter’s boss, Steve, a regular follower of the blog fondly tells co-workers of how Peter did a transatlantic crossing in a canoe. While Tioga is no canoe it is certainly larger than the kayak Steve rides. He often complains about the rough waters on the lake that he paddles on.
So,
Steve, Peter is back on the canoe again and very happy 😉

After our very rewarding first day in Lisbon, we finally managed to get a second one. While it clearly takes a lot more to really get to know Lisbon, we believe we got a good first impression of what this amazing city has to offer.

It all started in the morning when Jan, our Finnish sailor-friend, came over for a late breakfast. Ulf and Philip had taken care of the urgent work items early in the morning and were ready to sneak into the marina showers to clean up – before combining work with pleasure.
We took the train to Lisbon and went from one interesting site to the next, took care of more important work when needed and learned a lot more about Jan, the Finnish culture and how quickly he got into sailing (he bought his boat 3 years ago, quickly learned how to sail and now had managed to sail single-handedly all the way from Finnland to Spain!!).

We ticked a few more UNESCO world heritage site boxes as well (after Porto’s old town and the Torre de Hercules before in A Coruna) by visiting the Torre de Belém (a historic tower at the river Tagus) and Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (an impressive monestry that among other things is the home of Vasco da Gama‘s tomb (the Portuguese explorer and first European to reach India by sea)).

We were also quite lucky that Salt of Portugal liked one of our earlier posts. We were curious about who they were and very positively surprised by their blog and wished to have come across it earlier. Have a look at their really nice wordpress blog – very good quality.
We followed up and went to two places they recently wrote about:
Bairro do Avillez to have a late lunch and after that to Manteigaria for desert and were very happy that we did.Bairro do Avillez had an outstanding atmosphere and very high qualiy food, while Manteigaria cleary made the best Pastéis de Nata in Lisbon.
A walk through downtown to the Praça do Comércio and a joint dinner on the boat with Jan rounded of our day.
While business work and sightseeing were our main focus over the last few days, we will change gears tomorrow to get more boat work done as we getting ready for the sail to Madeira.

Today we reached the end of a fantastic leg and with that unfortunately had to say good-bye to Marc (this morning at 6am after moving Tioga back to the blocked of fireworks area) and Max (tonight at 10pm after our dinner at the Italian-Indian restaurant we found so strange we had to try out).

We initially meant to combine a work day with some more sightseeing in Lisbon, but then decided to stay in Cascais, rent some bikes and check out the coastline around Guincho (the local surf spot).
The look and feel of the area changed significantly the more we made it around the corner to the north and we had to push the pedals quite a bit to make it against the decent breeze and uphill to the western-most point of continental Europe, Cabo da Roca.

On the way back to the boat, we met Jan (the single-handed sailor from Finland that we had seen in A Coruna already) and enjoyed listening to all the adventures he had already experienced (and very happy to have a few more than one as crew on our legs).

We stayed in Cascais, got some work done, did laundry, scoped out the supermercado (they do deliver – which is important for our planned shopping spree on Thursday before we leave to Madeira), picked up the not repaired gennaker (and took measurement to potentially find a used replacement online), watched the very impressive J-Class Endeavour tie up in the marina – always quite a sight when the mast length of the tallest mast in the harbor doubles…

We also made a first connection with the Clube Naval de Cascais where Ulf and Philip are planning to work from for the next couple of days (and change burgees with) (they are the first yacht club that has optimists made out of aluminum we came across).

We had spent about 30min debating various ways to get Tioga out of her slip against the gusty northerly and were positively surprised that the wind had not only calmed down significantly but also turned 180 degrees – making for a very smooth departure – lots of noise about nothing and quite a relief for us (and better than the other way around).
We then left the marina and anchored just outside of it – to learn that we had to move due to the local fireworks.
Moving half a mile further down the coast positioned us well to watch the show and enjoy Ulf’s first pulpo dinner – and what it dinner it was, we want more, a lot more…